Reality and Deception
by A Wish On the Moon
Summary: To sleep, perchance to dream. However, to dream is to delude one's self, to accept deception over the truth. Yet, to dream is also to remember, and, in the end, all they ever wanted was acceptance of their pasts, of their existences. Still, they dance. L, BB, and the Kira Task Force. AU, pre-Death of L. Multi-Chapter.


**Disclaimer**: I lay no claim to any licensed characters or intellectual properties that were used in the making of this work.

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To sleep, perchance to dream. However, to dream is to delude one's self, to accept deception over the truth. Yet, to dream is also to remember, and, in the end, all they ever wanted was acceptance of their pasts, of their existences. Still, they dance.

_Why don't you sleep?_

He's asked that question to himself enough times to know that he will never admit to the answer. It isn't that he doesn't know why, but that he does, and that is why it is both a matter of pride and security for him to guard the secret to his grave.

Not that Watari didn't already know, though.

Simply put, working on cases relieved his mind of unnecessary, personal stress, got rid of everything and anything that he couldn't handle. He refuses to focus on anything but the immediate case at any given time, and the sugar greatly helps.

However, although he has adapted, adapted to sleeping little and differentiating into the weeks, he has weaknesses. He _has_ weaknesses, he _can_ be distracted from his all-consuming work, and he _will_ feel emotion, when given just cause.

… Fortunately, these occasions are few and far between, save for the nightmares.

The _nightmares_. He shudders at the very thought, albeit inwardly.

They are not normal nightmares, of monsters in the closet and spiders under the bed. Nor are they the nightmares of losing a loved one —for he had already lost his family, too _early_ to care and too late to not _realize_ — or of the horrors of the cases he has solved, their quota requiring blood and coins for him to even be slightly interested.

No, the nightmares are of the fire, of the hellish blaze from before he had become L, of the weakness, the trauma, the inability to _think_, and the loss of understanding.

Later, they had become little snippets of memory, of a small boy falling, mutilated and smiling, to his death; of another boy, morbid and quiet and a _Backup_ that had run away, never to be seen again; of that same boy, alive and deranged, murder to draw out the mouse, hands stained by blood and sight tainted by death, burning in that same hellish blaze all those years ago; of a man, too intelligent to kill and too dangerous to let go, rotting away in a cell in the City of Angels.

Recently, he had begun to hear the church bells ringing, and knows he will die soon. It is only a matter of time.

And so now he dreams of Whammy's House, of the top three in line to succeed him. He dreams of his reality, of the next generation and all their flaws, of the gaming and striped Missing, of the volatile and dangerous Mafia, of the surviving and silent Nancy.

He dreams of death, and so he remains awake, refusing to see the flashes of blood staining the walls, of an explosion and a kidnapping, a car chase and a fire, of massacre and escape, of defeat and peace.

He knows the peace will not last, and he knows that Watari's experiments will never become the real thing. His subjects are nothing more than prototypes, mere icons designed to inspire humanity to progress itself forward, to break free of the cyclic decay of nations.

What Watari has yet to realize is that there is no such thing as "perfect" or "ideal." They are all imperfect, all failures, destined to die and unable to right their own mistakes.

But the Kira Case can wait, perhaps. There will be time, he knows, and this case interests him far more than it should.

Perhaps because he never _could_ let go. But L knows that there is danger present here far more than with Kira.

After all, the backup copy had escaped. He had escaped his imprisonment and he was now on the hunt for L.

Beyond Birthday had returned.


End file.
